Laura Santoski

Laura is a former Blueprint LSAT Prep student who we could never quite get rid of. After scoring a 178 on the October 2011 LSAT, she taught and tutored Blueprint's students in Boston for three years (while developing a healthy appreciation for Dunks and lobster rolls). She now writes financial reports by day and LSAT blog posts by night.

Laura's favorite section of the LSAT is Logical Reasoning because each question is like a mini-puzzle (if you're taking a very charitable view). When writing for the blog, though, she particularly enjoys demystifying the Reading Comprehension section -- contrary to popular belief, it is learnable and there is a strategic way to approach it! Laura's favorite part of teaching and tutoring has been meeting a broad range of really cool people. (Plus she got some funny-embarrassing stories out of teaching all those classes, so that's a perk too.)

When she's not reading MSS, Laura browses a strange assortment of blogs, including Ask a Manager and Captain Awkward (whose matter-of-fact and direct style she hopes to attain). She also has the New York Times as her browser's homepage, and sometimes even reads the articles she sees on it.

Author Archive:

Figuring out timing on the LSAT can feel impossible — you might wonder how you’ll ever be able to get through a whole section, let alone devote time to those “extra” steps like anticipating the right answer or diagramming. The catch-22, of course, is that taking the time for those extra steps is necessary (see what we did there?) for getting through a section with adequate time — if you skip them, you’re more likely to waste time and be tempted by wrong answers.

There’s just about a month to go until the March LSAT, and although that might sound like a terrifying proposition, a month is actually an eternity in LSAT time. No, not because time seems to stand still when you’re doing LSAT questions (or at least, not only for that reason) — but because a month allows you plenty of time to make significant improvements in your LSAT score, as long as you’re using your time wisely. Here’s how to use that final month to ace your LSAT.

January LSAT scores were released today, which means that after weeks of impatient waiting and hours of frantic email-refreshing, January test-takers have finally met their fates. Every time LSAC releases LSAT scores, recipients fall roughly into one of three camps:

They say that one of the keys to success in this world is knowing yourself, and if there’s anything I know for sure about myself, it’s that I am the literal worst at managing big, unstructured projects. In my senior year, I had to write a thesis, for which I had to read an entire novel written in Spanish, plus supplementary materials, and write a paper that was about 40 pages long (luckily, in English). I had the entire year to complete these tasks, but instead of managing my time appropriately and working on it steadily throughout the year, I waited ’til about a month before it was due, panicked, and then had to frantically finish the book and write the last 30-odd pages in a stress-induced blackout.

To put it politely, the legal industry is not exactly known for its rapid adaptation to change. In light of that fact, with the recent changes to the LSAT — the shift to a digital format and the addition of twice as many testing dates per year — there are seismic shifts happening in the prelaw world this year.

Because we the people love nothing more than a stupid, unnecessary, and potentially dangerous challenge, the nation has been swept by the Bird Box challenge, in which — inspired by the eponymous movie starring Sandy B. — people blindfold themselves and then attempt to do normal daily tasks, such as walking down the street or using the subway.

Earlier this week, we discussed some resolutions to help you improve your LSAT score, become fabulously wealthy, find a girl/boyfriend, and generally improve your life (non-LSAT results not guaranteed). But there are some other, smaller habits you can implement in 2019 that will help with your LSAT studying, though they won’t help so much with those other things. If you’re studying for the LSAT this year, here are some things you should consider doing:

December 26 is known all over the globe as Boxing Day, but here at Blueprint, we know it for another reason: It marks exactly one month until the January 2019 LSAT. That means it’s time to set aside the presents, put down the cookies, and crack open those LSAT books again.

You can get a lot of studying done in a month, but you’ll want to make sure you’re making the most of it. Here are some things to add to your to-do list during this final month:

The holidays are a stressful time, and they can be particularly stressful if you’re trying to find time to study for the LSAT on top of your various other obligations. Here are some tips to navigate balancing your study obligations with your social (and other) obligations this season.

March comes in like a lion and goes out like a … lion that just aced its LSAT.

Oh, is that not how the saying goes? Because that’s how it works in our books, at least if that lion takes the best LSAT course ever created (at least, in our opinions, though we may be a little bit biased.)